Healthy, Moving, Modern Humans

My latest article is up at LewRockwell.com: Healthy, Moving, Modern Humans – Not Cavemen. The LRC page introduces the article as “Eat like a Cavemen,” but please ignore that BS. As I state in the article, the caveman moniker has seen enough dinosaur shit to last a lifetime. It’s not about “cavemen” – it’s about getting back to the real simple basics of eating real food. Noting fancy or unusual about that. The thrust of my article is a review of the great Mark Sisson book, Primal Blueprint. Order it and read it.

10 Responses to Healthy, Moving, Modern Humans

traderpaul says:

March 17th, 2010 at 9:18 am

An excellent review Karen.
Mark has a wonderful writing/teaching style that is not just informative but is highly entertaining. He also has the ability to skewer “Conventional Wisdom” yet remain non-confrontational.

1) (Grinning) I hope you and Lew are still on good terms? But a good article and well motivated. Permit a few humble amplifications (oh? and I can’t type btw – be patient).
2) Let’s tackle eating first; this is from a previous blob. “Dear Cousin Lucky, that’s why if you eat meat everyday you should eat as well raw vegetables (enzyme replacement therapy), and raw cheese (bacterial replacement therapy). It turns out that as we age we become both enzyme- and bacteria-depleted. So you end up starving yourself because of the inefficiencies of the digestive tract. The poor guy who had died w/ 5 pounds of undigested meat in his colon more likely died with a very poor digestive function. But it spurred the “I only eat chicken” decade. It’s about eating well, which means you get most of your food on the exterior of the food store. And steer away from High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) products. This stuff has the same digestive pathway as another familiar toxin – alcohol. Straight to the liver it goes. My naturally suspicious mind tells me it is a government plan to kill off its population…”
3) I don’t go for fad food diets & I consider “paleo” to be just another fad. For its good points, it does make sense to gravitate to a diet that worked long ago since it is genetically neutral. And that’s fine. But to throw tomatoes out is just plain stupidity.
4) Eating “real food” is actually pretty easy. With some minor exceptions, it is located on the EXTERIOR of the food store. The exterior has raw vegetable, fruits (which is the ONLY way Dr. Mercola advises us to imbibe fructose and is paleo-style), and nuts (peanuts, almonds, walnuts, and pecans, and my fav, cashews), your meat section (grain fed no hormones), then your dairy for (raw) cheese, eggs, and butter, and 15-grain whole wheat bread. See? Easy!
5) Raw meat, while excellent in providing enzymes (<104 degrees) w/ a biological vector close to your own body's vector, tastes blah to me. Plus there is the safety factor as well (never eat raw pork!). Get your enzymes from raw vegetables that are podded or sprouted (e.g., snap peas, brocco sprouts).
6) Violations to the Exterior rule include: chick peas, refried beans, and other Mexican delights, bran cereals (I skip breakfast ~100% of the time), chinese/arab food products (e.g., cous-cous), frozen veggies (peas & pearl onions are to die for – eat them raw; you'd be surprised how sweet peas are! – no pun intended). Oh and olive oil. Oh and Triscuit.
7) If you eat this stuff & keep calories in ~= calories out, you're well on your way! Plus fast once a week/month to scrub your system. It helps provide a reset pulse to your hunger mechanism. So basically a diet rich in protein, raw vegetables/fruits/nuts, cheese, and a little bit of carbs goes a long way. Not to be ignored is getting the right fats. Cheese fat digests in a much more healthy way than milk fat (metabolic mobilization rate – milk fat dumps into your lymph system 10x faster than cheese fat (studies on mice)). And saturated fats from meat (beef) is very healthy for you. Dr. Mercola did an excellent piece on the necessity of meat fat.
8) Avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup @ all costs. Apparently (July 2008), the FDA has been bent to the will of Big Corn (who should focus on making ethanol cheaply rather than choking our cows on it and making them sick – they eat grass, c'mon man!), and accepted HFCS as "natural". To discuss this would be WAY too long; type in "high fructose corn syrup FDA approval" in google and be prepared to be very unhappy (esp'ly the mercury part). Big Corn has had WAY too much fun w/ this carbon chain. 11) On movement, I couldn't agree more. As a retired Ultimate Disc player and 10K racer, I have really noticed the effects of being sedentary (I write code behind a computer monitor all day long). Due to a recent back injury, a coworker pointed out a very useful book by Pete Egoscue "The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion". This is a delightful book that tackles not only methods of recovery from injury, but also the need to move in a sedentary lifestyle. His insight into body mechanics and how they lead to injury is extremely valuable. Sells for $9.36 on Amazon. This is good stuff for anyone.
Lastly, I have NO clue what my HDL count is. Reason? Haven't seen a doctor in 2 decades (doctors don't think logically IMHO). Oooops, I lied. I had to go see a doctor twice to authorize the MRI. Said he used to be an engineer (trying to be freindly with me – uh-oh suspicion). When he looked over the MRI, I asked him how do we fix this? (And this is funny) He said, well you could take pain killers. I then asked, but does that FIX the disk? Oh, no. But you could try an epidural w/ steroids which numbs the pain. I asked again, does that FIX the disk? Oh no. Oh I see, you want to solve the problem! Well then, I could cut into your disk and that would solve it! By that time I was about to wrap a brick bat around his neck. No wonder this doob is no engineer – we're about solving problems.
So, with physical therapy and Egoscue frame straightening (which caused the problem to BEGIN with), I'm going to heal from this naturally. And oh yeah? Don't do deep squats w/ a 45lb bar on your neck without supports and try to explode w/o having your back absolutely straight. That will definitely get you sooner or later.

Karen De Coster says:

March 17th, 2010 at 12:24 pm

Iluvatar — throwing tomatoes out? Don’t look at the micro-aspects of ‘versions’ of paleo diets. That’s all silly nonsense. As I said, there’s huge variation not worth worrying about. Eating real food is the gist of my review and Mark’s book. For instance, I still eat dairy….